Thai village crafts, as with other cultures, have developed

Question

Thai village crafts, as with other cultures, have developed through the principle that form follows function and incorporate readily available materials fashioned using traditional skills.

Option AOption BOption COption DOption E

(This question is from Official Guide. Therefore, because of copyrights, the complete question cannot be copied here. The question can be accessed at GMAT Club)

Solution

Sentence Analysis

The sentence intends to say that Thai village crafts are similar to crafts of other cultures: both have developed through the given principle and both incorporate readily available materials fashioned using traditional skills.

In my research, I have found out that “as with” is commonly used as an elided form of “as is the case with”. It is used to present similarities between two entities. For example:

As with other cable-news networks, Fox News has gotten an audience boost from interest in the presidential election. (WSJ.com)

Means: Just as other cable-news networks have gotten an audience boost from interest in the presidential election, so too has Fox News.

As with any new potentially therapeutic approach, we must evaluate e-cigarettes based on the information currently available. (WSJ.com)

Means: Just as we must evaluate any new potentially therapeutic approach on the information currently available, so we must evaluate e-cigarettes.

As can be seen in the second example above, even though the entities that are similar are “therapeutic approach” and “e-cigarettes”, ‘e-cigarettes’ doesn’t appear right after “ as with…” phrase. I have, thus, found the use of “as with” phrase much more flexible in contrast to the use of “like” in which the compared entity must follow the “like” phrase.

The error in the given sentence is that it compares Thai Village crafts with other cultures. The comparison has to be with crafts of other cultures.

Option Analysis

(A) Incorrect. For the reason mentioned above.

(B) Incorrect. The verb “did” is incorrect since it doesn’t go with the verb “have” used in the main clause. Even if we change this structure to “as have those of”, it would still be incorrect because of its placement. Since this structure presents similarity using both subject and verb, it needs to appear after the verb of the main clause. The below structure will be correct:

Thai village crafts have developed, as have those of other cultures, through the principle…

(C) Incorrect. In this structure, “they” seems to refer to “Thai village crafts”, leading to an illogical meaning that Thai village crafts developed in other cultures. Also, even if we say that “they” refers to “village crafts”, the placement of this structure containing both the subject and the verb should be after the main verb in the sentence, as explained in option B.

(D) Incorrect. “Like” must always be followed by a noun-phrase and never by a clause or a prepositional phrase.

(E) Correct. This option correctly compares Thai village crafts with the crafts of other cultures.

About Chiranjeev Singh

An Alumnus of IIM Ahmedabad and with scores of 780 (2017) and 770 (2013) on GMAT and 99.98%ile on CAT, Chiranjeev is one of the most qualified GMAT tutors in India. Chiranjeev has earlier served as Director of Curriculum at e-GMAT.
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